I have had a tricky relationship with poetry in the past, most especially when I’ve studied it. Whenever I had to examine poems I mostly experienced the same reaction that sure, some poems were nice to read and contemplate for a little while, but that’s where my thoughts stopped.

My Experience Studying Poetry

Analysing poetry became more complicated for me to analyse than novels during my A-levels, and I simply decided during this time, that poetry was not for me, nor did I want to study an English course at university that drew heavily on poetry. Doing a combined A-level of English Language and Literature meant that so many technical terms had to be applied and then interpreted which I was not successful at. I did get better at it eventually, but looking back I think it just took all of the appreciation out of the poems for me, being so focused on trying to pick them apart that I couldn’t enjoy them how they were. My lack of confidence in my lessons didn’t help either, and so when I picked modules for my university course, I tried to avoid poetry where I could.

Which now is pretty fun, since my first year had so much poetry, and in my first week I ended up switching a module to one solely focused on poetry, which became my favourite module of the term. Studying poetry at university brought back the enjoyment I’d been lacking in my A-Levels, and doing just English Literature for my degree meant the technical side of analysis was pushed aside (though not gone completely). The encouragement of independent thought and the numerous interpretations that people could present meant that I could appreciate or not appreciate the poems by themselves, and make my own arguments without being completely bound to technicalities. Even if my lectures or assignments themselves didn’t engage me, I could still be able to foster my own understandings and interest of poems and separate them from any negative aspects of my degree. As my interest in history was still growing at the point, I was (and still am) attracted to the historical context in each poem, and the differences in each period of poets, and the impact of society.

There are still poems I dislike, and analysis that is difficult or dull, but I’m glad that my opinions have developed and helped me further in my degree. I’ve picked five of my favourite poems, a lot of them are from the nineteenth century and the Romantic period which I studied a lot of this year.

Favourite Poems

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I’ve studied a lot of Percy Bysshe Shelley, but this poem was the first, back during my A-Levels. This was one of the few poems from the anthology we studied that I really liked, and I’ve studied it twice more whilst at university.

A short but incredibly powerful poem Shelley published in 1818, Ozymandias was written in a competition between Shelley and fellow poet Horace Smith. The narrator in the poem is retelling a story told to him by a traveller about a statue of pharaoh Ramses II, which now lies ruined and decaying in the desert, forgotten. Shelley conveys that even the mightiest of leaders will be undone by time, and eventually dismissed. Power is only temporary, and tyranny will not be remembered, time making ordinary humans and leaders trivial.

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Mont Blanc by Percy Shelley

One of Shelley’s most praised poems, Mont Blanc is a poem I studied extensively this year. I did one of my assignments on the image of the Sublime Shelley presents, and though I didn’t do as well as I hoped, it is one of the poems I can appreciate without it being diminished by the stress I went through writing about it. It’s a long poem, so I’ll only put the beginning up. Written by Shelley on his trip to Mont Blanc in 1816, the feeling of the Sublime (an experience of the infinite, reaching the limit of thought and language) was so experienced by Shelley, that he called his feelings “not unallied to madness’, (Shelley also had to be that little bit extra by signing his name in the guestbook as ‘Democrat, Philanthropist and Atheist’ in Greek).

The Poem emphasises the extraordinary power of nature, Shelley being transfixed and terrified by the overwhelming beauty and power of the mountains. Shelley doesn’t credit this creation to God or any higher power, nature reigning supreme over itself, making humans and the imagination seem pointless and insignificant. However Shelley realises that the human imagination is vital, as it can give the mountains meaning and uncover any lessons this power has to teach. Without mankind, nature has no purpose, it being our job to assign meaning to its beauty.

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom—

Now lending splendour, where from secret springs

The source of human thought its tribute brings

Of waters—with a sound but half its own,

Such as a feeble brook will oft assume,

In the wild woods, among the mountains lone,

Where waterfalls around it leap for ever,

Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river

Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves.

Thus thou, Ravine of Arve—dark, deep Ravine—

Thou many-colour’d, many-voiced vale,

Over whose pines, and crags, and caverns sail

Fast cloud-shadows and sunbeams: awful scene,

Where Power in likeness of the Arve comes down

From the ice-gulfs that gird his secret throne,

Bursting through these dark mountains like the flame

Of lightning through the tempest;—thou dost lie,

Thy giant brood of pines around thee clinging,

Children of elder time, in whose devotion

The chainless winds still come and ever came

To drink their odours, and their mighty swinging

To hear—an old and solemn harmony;

Thine earthly rainbows stretch’d across the sweep

Of the aethereal waterfall, whose veil

Robes some unsculptur’d image; the strange sleep

Which when the voices of the desert fail

Wraps all in its own deep eternity;

Thy caverns echoing to the Arve’s commotion,

A loud, lone sound no other sound can tame;

Thou art pervaded with that ceaseless motion,

Thou art the path of that unresting sound—

Dizzy Ravine! and when I gaze on thee

I seem as in a trance sublime and strange

To muse on my own separate fantasy,

My own, my human mind, which passively

Now renders and receives fast influencings,

Holding an unremitting interchange

With the clear universe of things around;

One legion of wild thoughts, whose wandering wings

Now float above thy darkness, and now rest

Where that or thou art no unbidden guest,

In the still cave of the witch Poesy,

Seeking among the shadows that pass by

Ghosts of all things that are, some shade of thee,

Some phantom, some faint image; till the breast

From which they fled recalls them, thou art there!

For the rest of the poem see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45130/mont-blanc-lines-written-in-the-vale-of-chamouni

Last Lines by Anne Bronte

It seems I’m impossible of writing a post without mentioning the Bronte family somehow, but I couldn’t leave this one out. Anne’s last poem, she began writing Last Lines after finding out she had consumption in January 1848, and that she was going to die. Her sister Emily had passed away from consumption only a few weeks before, and her poem shows a crisis of faith, and a wish to remain longer in the world. Anne’s accepted God’s plan for her, though she may not understand it. However after the first eight verses, the poem’s meaning shifts. Anne added on nine more verses after her treatment started, this addition being one of determination and hope, hope that Anne will live and that she will make the most of the time she has left, though still accepting of whatever God’s plan may be. Anne wanted to do more good in the world, and this poem reflects the bravery this young woman had, and I’ll always be so sad she did not get to live longer.

A dreadful darkness closes in

On my bewildered mind;

O let me suffer and not sin,

Be tortured yet resigned.

Through all this world of whelming mist

Still let me look to Thee,

And give me courage to resist

The Tempter till he flee.

Weary I am — O give me strength

And leave me not to faint;

Say Thou wilt comfort me at legnth

And pity my complaint.

I’ve begged to serve Thee heart and soul,

To sacrifice to Thee

No niggard portion, but the whole

Of my identity.

I hoped amid the brave and strong

My portioned task might lie,

To toil amid the labouring throng

With purpose pure and high.

But Thou hast fixed another part,

And Thou hast fixed it well;

I said so with my bleeding heart

When first the anguish fell.

For Thou hast taken my delight, And hope of life away,And bid me watch the painful night And wait the weary day.

The hope and delight were Thine;

I bless Thee for their loan;

I gave Thee while I deemed them mine

Too little thanks, I own.

Shall I with joy Thy blessings share

And not endure their loss?

Or hope the martyr’s crown to wear

And cast away the cross?

These weary hours will not be lost,

These days of passive misery,

These nights of darkness anguish tost

If I can fix my heart on Thee.

Weak and weary though I lie,

Crushed with sorrow, worn with pain,

Still I may lift to Heaven mine eye,

And strive and labour not in vain,

That inward strife against the sins

That ever wait on suffering;

To watch and strike where first begins

Each ill that would corruption bring,

That secret labour to sustain

With humble patience every blow,

To gather fortitude from pain,

And hope and holiness from woe.

Thus let me serve Thee from my heart,

Whatever be my written fate,

Whether thus early to depart

Or yet a while to wait.

If Thou shouldst bring me back to life

More humbled I should be;

More wise, more strengthened for the strife,

More apt to lean on Thee.

Should Death be standing at the gate

Thus should I keep my vow;

But, Lord, whate’er my future fate

So let me serve Thee now.

The Prisoner by Emily Bronte

I shall try not to repeat myself by talking too much about Emily Bronte, since I wrote my last post about Wuthering Heights and her poetry, including The Prisoner. Emily and Anne had an imaginary world called Gondal, and Emily’s writing was mainly for this universe, and the rest of her work is clearly inspired by it. She was absorbed in this world, preferring it to reality, and her genius is portrayed in these works, her poetry full of passion, power and a love of nature. The Prisoner was a Gondal poem, and a long fragment of the poem was selected for publication, in the Bronte sister’s first attempt at publishing with their poetry collection Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell published in 1846. This poem I love especially, as I always get transfixed by the language, and the emotions are so vividly expressed I find it difficult not to be mesmerised.

(Stanzas 10-16)

He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs,With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars.Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.

“Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears.When, if my spirit’s sky was full of flashes warm,I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunder-storm.

“But, first, a hush of peace–a soundless calm descends;The struggle of distress, and fierce impatience ends;Mute music soothes my breast–unuttered harmony,That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.

“Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels:Its wings are almost free–its home, its harbour found,Measuring the gulph, it stoops and dares the final bound,

“Oh I dreadful is the check–intense the agony–When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again;The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.

“Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,If it but herald death, the vision is divine!”

She ceased to speak, and we, unanswering, turned to go–We had no further power to work the captive woe:Her cheek, her gleaming eye, declared that man had givenA sentence, unapproved, and overruled by Heaven.

To Autumn by John Keats

This was one of the poems I really didn’t like when I studied it during my A-Levels. The language was confusing, and it felt too dated to me at the time to understand. My class didn’t like it either, and so I was disappointed when I had to look at it again in my Poetry module in my first semester of university. However this time around I really liked it. It helped that it was autumn at the time, and Keats’s wonderful imagery made the season feel more beautiful, and after the seminar me and my friend went and took pictures of the trees on campus, and found other people from our seminar doing the same thing. One thing I appreciate so much about poetry is how it has heightened my love for nature, (cheesy as it sounds), but poems like To Autumn help me notice small wonders of my everyday settings that I might not have noticed before. Written in 1819 after Keats took a walk in Winchester, it was one of several Odes he composed in the year. I wanted to include this poem in my post as it encapsulates how my relationship with poetry has changed whilst studying my degree.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

The picture I took after my seminar

There were more poems I wanted to discuss so I will hopefully do a follow up post in the future, featuring some modern poetry.